Man caught with 70,000 child porn images

A RUSKINGTON man caught with a collection of over 70,000 child porn photographs has been jailed for three years at Lincoln Crown Court.

Christopher Standing, 58, was arrested a year ago when police raided his home in Cliffe Close after discovering he was allowing other paedophiles to view the sickening images in his collection via a file sharing network.

Phil Howes, prosecuting, said Standing, who used the name ‘babylover’ on the network, admitted he had been accessing child porn but claimed he gained no sexual gratification from what he was doing.

The child pornography found included over 7,000 images in the two most serious categories as well as 1,548 films.

Among the items found on computer equipment seized from Standing’s home was ‘The Paedophile Handbook’ which he had downloaded from the internet.

Standing, a former carer who had in the past worked with children, also had a collection of thousands of extreme pornographic images featuring sex between humans and animals.

Standing, now living in Morpeth, Northumberland, admitted five charges of making indecent images of children and distribution of images. He also admitted possession of 77,038 indecent photographs of children on 13 June 2012, possession of a further 3,945 prohibited images and possession of 2,262 extreme pornographic images.

He was placed on the sex offenders’ register for life and banned from working with children.

Judge Michael Heath described the photographs as “shocking”.

The judge told him: “The effects of a physical and psychological nature on these children who undergo abuse to produce this material for the sexual gratification of perverts like you is simply incalculable. How you can get satisfaction from this material I don’t know.”

Giles Bedloe, defending, said that Standing, who has recently been working with vulnerable adults, had health problems and his sentence had been delayed after he suffered a heart attack.

He said Standing had been badly affected by the death of his father.

Mr Bedloe said: “It was after that he turned to the internet and the rest follows from there.

“He has understood what he was doing was wrong for a long time. He wanted to stop and recognised that he needed help.”